– first 50,000 to arrive in Guyana within 2 weeks
…15,524 persons immunised
Immunisation of the population is high on Government’s agenda, with continuous efforts in the pipeline to secure enough doses to make it a reality. In light of this, within the next two weeks, another 50,000 Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccines will arrive in Guyana.
This was announced by Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony on Friday during his daily pandemic update. He noted that the Government has indicated its plans to purchase 200,000 doses of the vaccine.
As such, he added that local authorities will engage Russian officials in the near future for more shots to be made available.
“We have put in a purchase order for 200,000 doses of the Sputnik vaccine and within a two-week period, we should have the first 50,000 doses arriving in Guyana.”
After 3000 doses were sent from the Barbadian Government, the Chinese and Indian Governments also sent 20,000 Sinopharm and 80,000 AstraZeneca vaccines respectively. Another 100,000 is expected through the COVAX mechanism.
“We want to immunise a substantial part of our population this year. If we’re going to do so, we have to source vaccines. We have been using the AstraZeneca and we’re expecting to get additional doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX. They have promised to send us 100,800 doses,” the Minister expressed.
From the vaccines sent, Guyana’s immunisation network has already begun. As of Friday, a total of 15,524 persons have been immunised using COVID-19 vaccines. The vaccine administration campaign has been progressing well, according to the Health Minister.
Nevertheless, he signalled areas which could be improved – one of which is Linden.
“We need persons of influence in Linden to advocate for the vaccine because as we know, once you’re immunised, it protects you from getting the more severe form of COVID. We’ve had persons from Region 10 who would’ve gotten infected and prior to this rollout of vaccines and in some cases, they had the most severe form of COVID and we had a few deaths.”
Dr Anthony posited that this can be prevented once persons are inoculated. Authorities will seek to have greater engagements in such communities to witness a higher uptake of the shots. Going forward, the Ministry will be ramping up its rollout to access a greater fraction of the population.
The age range to guarantee eligibility will be lowered when the first phase, comprising of healthcare workers and persons 60 years or older, is completed. It will eventually move down further until everyone is immunised.
The Government’s vaccination programme targets frontline workers, health workers and the elderly mainly because they are considered to be the most at risk. The Minister said that the above 60 age requirement is linked to the fact that those persons are more at risk and an assessment of the fatality trend shows that older persons are falling victim to the virus.
Prime Minister Mark Phillips reiterated earlier this month that this vaccination campaign is part of Phase Two of the PPP/C Government’s plan to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The first phase dealt with the emergency measures put in place to fortify the health system to deal with not only the spread but the tracing and treatment of infected persons.
To prepare the health infrastructure for this massive rollout, upgrades were made to a network of facilities. With expansion for storage, freezers were also added to ensure that the vaccine temperature isn’t compromised. Training was also facilitated for each health team currently rolling out the exercise.
While the vaccine offers tremendous protection from the virus, the World Health Organisation has cautioned, “Being vaccinated does not mean that we can throw caution to the wind and put ourselves and others at risk, particularly because it is still not clear the degree to which the vaccines can protect not only against disease but also against infection and transmission.”
